ANZAC Day is a tricky one to talk about with young children. Talking about war and people dying is not something that we really want to expose to the very young too early and yet ANZAC Day is such an important day in Australia and one that children should have some concept of.
Finding activities that introduce children to the concept of ANZAC Day is a great way to open it up for discussion in an age appropriate way. Last year we made ANZAC biscuits using my Nan’s recipe. That was pretty special and we will probably do this again this year but I wanted to do a little more than just make biscuits.
I saw these poppies on a blog called A Little Delightful. You can download and print the poppies from here which I did but I wanted to do something that was a little bit more hands on so drew some of my own (based on the template) and Thomas and his little friend painted them with red paint.
We talked beforehand about ANZAC Day and I told Thomas that ANZAC Day was about remembering the soldiers. We looked up ‘soldiers’ in our children’s dictionary. There are some lovely children’s books around about ANZAC Day. You can see a comprehensive list at My Little Bookcase.
What you need:
White cardboard
Red poster paint and paint brush
Black paper cut into small circles
Green pipe cleaners
Sticky tape
Glue stick
What you do:
Trace and cut out poppies. Depending on the age of your children, they may or may not be able to help with this process. Thomas at 3 is a little bit too young to be able to cut out a flower. We are still working on snipping :-).
Have you child paint the poppies with the red paint.
When the poppies are dry, place some glue in the middle and stick on one black circle. Attach a pipe cleaner to the back of the poppy with sticky tape.
Create your own display for ANZAC Day :-).
How do you discuss this important day in our history with your children?
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